An elderly woman "almost fainted" when she discovered her daughter had bought her a new mattress, and thrown away the old one which contained the woman's life savings. The daughter rushed to get the mattress back but she was too late. It had been mixed up with another 3,000 tonnes of rubbish collected that day. A search of 3 different landfills have failed to turn up the $1 million dollar mattress. "People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad," said the daughter. Her mother had no comment.

Making the subway safe, one bullion stitch at a time.

Bocaj writes "A USB microwave specifically designed for baked beans? Yep, the folks at HEINZ are smokin' the good stuff. Seriously. Even Gizmodo says it's real. I want one of these. I'm just not sure why."

Sometimes being gullible can seem sweet or endearing. Sometimes it can lead you to smash windows, break sprinkler heads, shut off the electricity, and pull the fire alarm. Christina Bergmann was working the front desk at an Arkansas Holiday Inn, when a male caller "identified himself as an employee of Grennel Fire Sprinkler service." The man told her that there was a problem with the hotels sprinkler system. She "needed to pull the fire alarm to reset them." Christina, with the help of a destruction-loving hotel guest, proceeded to follow the caller's instructions — which resulted in damages to the hotel's windows, carpets and electrical system, totalling about $50,000.

A dog owner got a big surprise while playing fetch with her dog after the pooch brought her a live World War II era US hand grenade. Police called a munitions expert to identify and defuse the grenade. It is not uncommon for people to find grenades and bombs left over from World War II in parts of Germany.

In the epic battles between elephant gangs and biker gangs, elephant gangs usually win.

A shoe-maker, Aetrex Worldwide, and GTX Corp, a company that makes miniaturized Global Positioning Satellite tracking and location-transmitting devices, are teaming up to make shoes for people suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. "The technology will provide the location of the individual wearing the shoes within 9m (30 feet), anywhere on the planet. Sixty per cent of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease will be involved in a 'critical wandering incident' at least once during the progression of the disease — many more than once," said Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University who served as an advisor on the project. Not only will this technology allow a caretaker to find a loved one with a click of a mouse, but the shoes are more humanizing than a bell hung around the neck.

He will refocus on achievable goals like applying deodorant daily, and learning what to say when you burp.

A printing mistake led some recent North High School grads to get a note with instructions to "leave the state immediately after the ceremony." The note should have read, "The graduates will leave the State Theatre immediately after the ceremony." The new note wasn't free of errors, however, as it now instructed students to be at the theater no later than 3:45 a.m. instead of the intended 3:45 p.m.

What's worse than going through a foreclosure? Getting trapped inside the house after the city boards it up, without first checking to make sure it's empty. Ted Poetsch was spending the last hour he had to vacate his home of 53 years by eating a little lunch and collecting a few last personal items. That's when he heard the contractor outside starting to drill into the door frame. Cane in hand, he hurried to the front door only to discover that he was too late. He had been boarded up inside. City officials say that Mr. Poetsch had ample warning that they were coming that day and that his brief incarceration was a mistake.

After suffering a stroke, 69-year-old Ali Asghar was unlucky enough to get an ambulance driver who really, really, hated overtime. The driver allegedly refused to work beyond his shift and clocked out part-way through the trip to the hospital. Since it was 15 minutes past quitting time, the ambulance was taken to the depot where the next shift's driver took over and finally brought Mr. Asghar to the hospital. Asghar deteriorated during the drive and died soon after arriving at North Tees hospital's accident and emergency unit. An NHS source said, "Paramedics pride themselves on the public being able to feel they are in the best hands when they are called out to an emergency. If this person wanted a nine to five job he should not have become a paramedic. A couple of minutes in a life or death situation is a very long time. Skimming off just a few seconds from an emergency call-out can save lives — that's why ambulances are fitted with blue lights and sirens."

Forget about an old boot or a tire, Solomon Rodney caught an 8-foot-long missile on a recent fishing trip. Rodney tied the missile to the top of his boat and planned on keeping it as a souvenir. After contacting officials when he got ashore, it was determined that the missile was live. A bomb squad from MacDill Air Force Base was summoned, and the area was evacuated before the weapon was dismantled. Rodney says the Air Force told him not to pick up any more missiles. "They told me if you find another one, just let it go," he said.

It's the only way to keep him off the furniture.

An anonymous reader writes "Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet (in Swedish) reports that Henrik Pontén, a lawyer of Antipiratbyrån, a Swedish organization against file sharing, has received a notification from officials that an application for change of his name has been approved and a new first name 'Pirate' has been added to his name. Authorities do not check the identity of persons applying for name changes. Pirate Pontén now has to apply for another change in order to revert the change."

A large number of schools participating in a pay-for-grades program have seen test scores in reading and math go up by almost 40 percentage points. The Sparks program will pay seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for good performance on 10 assessment tests. About two-thirds of the 59 schools in the program improved their scores by margins above the citywide average. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven. Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.

If you are ever in Tokyo on a long trip and feel the need for a little cat companionship there is now a place for you. Cat Cafes are becoming more and more popular with cat fanciers, the elderly and people who don't quite dare take that leap into the furry community. For $9, a person can sit for an hour and sip hair-laden tea while one of the resident cats ignores or rubs itself against you. Some cat cafe rules include: customers may not hold or stroke a cat if it resists, you must let napping cats lie, and you can't bring cat nip or cat food to the cafe.

A group of researchers set out to discover what makes the ideal Bond girl. Why they did this is anybody's guess. Perhaps they had already determined how many fools Mr. T would pity on an average day. The team assessed the physical traits of all 195 female characters in the first 20 movies, then contrasted the characteristics of the 98 who had "sexual contact" with Bond with those of the 97 who did not. They found that the women Bond sleeps with tend to be younger, slimmer and more attractive than the women he does not. Amazing. "A majority of female characters engaged in some sexual activity, particularly those in major roles. And the great majority of sexual behaviors involved Bond himself," says the research team, led by Kimberly Neuendorf, professor of communication at Cleveland State University, Ohio.

This is an easy read compared to the Google directory.

An anonymous reader writes "Published today in the journal Current Biology, a new study shows that laughter is not a unique human trait, but a behavior shared by all great apes. Tickle a baby chimpanzee and it will giggle just like a human infant. This is because laughter evolved millions of years ago in one of our common ancestors, say scientists."

Scientists have found ten new emperor penguin colonies by spotting their skid marks on the Antarctic ice from satellite images (video on page). The ice around the penguins gets very dirty because they congregate in a small area in very large colonies for months. Peter Fretwell, Mapping Expert, British Antarctic Survey says, "What we find is that we can see the guano (excrement) from space. They stay in the same space in very large colonies for eight months of the year and the ice around them gets very dirty, and it's that that we can see on the satellite images."